Suge Knight has agreed to a $1.5 million settlement to the family of Terry Carter, the man he ran over and killed with his truck in 2015.
On Tuesday, Knight appeared in court via video while sitting at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego and agreed to the settlement in his wrongful death case. Carter’s wife and daughters, Nekaya and Crystal, will be getting $500,000 each.
The agreement prevented a retrial on claims made by Carter’s family. If Knight hadn’t settled, Los Angeles County Judge Thomas Long would have begun jury selection on April 30. Knight would’ve gone on trial even without his lawyer, David Kenner, who has been trying to exit the case due to a conflict with his client.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Knight spoke on his friendship with Carter and recalled what happened on the fateful day he ran him over. Knight had gotten into an altercation in a restaurant parking lot and ran over Carter and another man before fleeing the scene. Carter died within an hour of the incident, and the other victim suffered two broken ankles and a head laceration.
Knight is now serving a 28-year sentence and won’t be eligible for parole until October 2034.
“Terry was a friend of mine. It definitely wasn’t done intentionally. It wasn’t done to bring harm to him,” Knight told Rolling Stone. “One of the reasons I settled [is] I got respect for Terry, so that means I’ve got respect for his family.”
He added, “I didn’t want to put the family through more pain. It’s not that I did anything wrong. I never would have. But I do owe the family an apology because of this thing they had to go through.”
Carter’s widow also spoke on accepting the settlement with Knight: “It’s hard living without him when I lived all those many years with him. It’s been very, very difficult. I’ve been in pain ever since January 29, 2015, I haven’t had a good day, not one good day. […] I’m not happy with the outcome of it, at all, but I don’t want to give him another opportunity to put on a clown show and act like a bitch. Maybe somebody will shank him in jail.”
